Carrier route record
AABZN→ORD
American Airlines · Bozeman to Chicago
- Flights
- 444
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on BZN to ORD draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 444 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on BZN to ORD runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 437 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.90%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on BZN to ORD, 1,251 flights
These figures cover 444 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on BZN to ORD
American flew 444 of the 1,251 flights on BZN to ORD, about 35% of it. Its 66.4% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.6% to American at 66.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 720 | 77.6% | 91 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 41 | 75.6% | 71 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 46 | 69.6% | 53 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 444 | 66.4% | 89 min | 0.90% | C+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am64 flights85.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm270 flights59.6%
- 2pm–5pm33 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm77 flights68.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 59.6% on time against 85.7% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 270 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on BZN to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 57.4% on time, 19 points below February, the best at 76.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 58.0%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on BZN to ORD runs when it is late
American on BZN to ORD often beats the schedule: 142 of 437 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 147 late arrivals split 39 under half an hour, 46 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 62 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early142 flights32.5%
- Within 15 min148 flights33.9%
- 15–29 min late39 flights8.9%
- 30–59 min late46 flights10.5%
- 1–2 hours late37 flights8.5%
- 2+ hours late25 flights5.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 437 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
27 of 153 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 21 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on BZN to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 December 2025, 19 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across December, February, June and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 December 2025 | 19 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 February 2026 | 18 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 December 2025 | 8 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 June 2026 | 5 hours 10 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 March 2026 | 4 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 13,069 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.68%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,185 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg runs 63.9% on time across 445 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 444 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking American on BZN to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 444 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 66.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 437 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BZN to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to BZN, the return leg
- United Airlines on BZN to ORD77.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Flying to ski country: which routes into the mountains run on time
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.